Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City – once the most densely populated place on Earth – is the perfect movie setting: a Piranesian labyrinth of squalid high rises and dark, cramped alleys, teeming with crooks, lowlifes, addicts and impoverished families running small businesses, legit and otherwise. This 1980s-set action epic lovingly, meticulously recreates the notorious neighbourhood (which was demolished in 1994), but sadly, the backdrop is more interesting than the story.
At heart it’s a tale of a Chinese immigrant caught between rival gangs. Street fighter Chan Lok-kwan (Raymond Lam) is initially scammed by local triad boss Mr Big (a cigar-smoking caricature from veteran Jackie Chan sidekick Sammo Hung). Chan retaliates by stealing a package and, after a great bus-top chase scene, he stumbles accidentally into the Walled City, a no-go area for Mr Big’s goons as it’s ruled by local boss Cyclone (Louis Koo). As well as running a barber shop, and smoking like a chimney even though he is dying of a lung disease, Cyclone rules over the giant slum like a benign dictator, collecting rents but also looking out for its citizens and maintaining some kind of order. He and the rest of the Walled City community take Chan under their wing, and this hard-working orphan starts to feel at home for the first time – until a highly unlikely twist of fate puts all the factions on a path to all-out gang warfare.
